A review by shaythereader
The Parcel, by Anosh Irani
5.0
Madhu is a forty year old transgender sex worker, who lives in Kamathipura, the red light district in Bombay, India, an area full of poor people, prostitutes, females rejected for being AIDS positive, and young girls sold by their families into sex slavery.
Rejected by his own family for being too effeminate, Madhu seeks acceptance in the hijra community, India's third sex, where Gurumai, a hijra guru, takes him as one of her disciplines and provides him with the love his family had denied him.
" There is a term for me in almost every Indian language. I am reviled and revered, deemed to have been blessed and cursed, with sacred powers. Parents think of me as a kidnapper, shopkeepers as a lucky charm, and married couples as a fertility expert. To passengers in taxis, I am but a nuisance. I am shooed away like a crow. Everyone has their version of what I am. Or what they want me to be."
With beautiful language and strong characters, the author tells stories of different people who live in kamathipura, stories full of rejection, love, and the search for acceptance in a world of prostitution, sex slavery, and child trafficking.
Rejected by his own family for being too effeminate, Madhu seeks acceptance in the hijra community, India's third sex, where Gurumai, a hijra guru, takes him as one of her disciplines and provides him with the love his family had denied him.
" There is a term for me in almost every Indian language. I am reviled and revered, deemed to have been blessed and cursed, with sacred powers. Parents think of me as a kidnapper, shopkeepers as a lucky charm, and married couples as a fertility expert. To passengers in taxis, I am but a nuisance. I am shooed away like a crow. Everyone has their version of what I am. Or what they want me to be."
With beautiful language and strong characters, the author tells stories of different people who live in kamathipura, stories full of rejection, love, and the search for acceptance in a world of prostitution, sex slavery, and child trafficking.